Actually, it encourages reading.
Lessing writes/speaks eloquently about the thirst for books that poor African
villagers express. She reports on a visit to a friend of hers who taught in North
Western Zimbabwe in the late 1980's who was about to leave for a visit to London:
As I sit with my friend in his room, people drop shyly in, and all, everyone begs for books. "Please send us books when you get back to London". One man said, "They taught us to read but we have no books". Everybody I met, everyone, begged for books.
The One Laptop Per Child project, offering a
computer and internet access to poor children around the world, together with
a program such as Project Gutenberg
makes a vast number of books available to those same people, children and adults
alike, who thirst for something to read. I find it hard to think of a more obvious
refutation of the "inanities" that the internet supposedly heaps upon
us, that the possibilities that these programs present for people hungry to read.
Go to: Accessed via the internet, of course, or
Go to: Should that really make headlines?, or
Go to: The internet and some of its discontents.